I wish Chris hadn't sent that. I really think that the coverup is worse than the crime, and his only crime in this is a lack of experience and some youthful arrogance.

Strong language to follow. Hold one.

I've been working on this for a few days, now, trying to tone it down, some. It's part of an upcoming Activism email.

Here's about as down as it gets toned.

But . . .

Let's back up for a moment and see how this mess happened.

I've met the young man, the new NRA legislative lobbyist for Minnesota and several other states. He's a nice guy, as eager to please as a house-trained Lab puppy, and, like many/most of his predecessors around here is learning how do to lobbying at the state level by being thrown in the deep end and, mostly, doing okay.

But he got played by pros. And covering it up with a "neutral" NRA rating on the mess he made makes it worse, not better.

Let's back up.

Tony Cornish, Representative from Good Thunder, is as nice a guy as you'd want to meet, and he had the nice idea that we've talked about before: making it possible for hunters to simply unload their guns when transporting them, rather than having to unload and encase them. Not a big deal, but a nice little thing, certainly.

And he asked the NRA man to help him move the bill through -- with the NRA supporting it, it would obviously be a safe, pro-gun vote.

And then the NRA man went into a meeting with a cow, and came out with a bag of beans. The bag of beans is the one that we talked about before -- making the rights of gun owners vary, depending on where they happen to live.

Look -- I've been in the room when this sort of thing has been brought up before. The virulently anti-gun DFL metrocrats have a horrible problem -- they're unable to get a handle on anything useful to quell the ongoing violence in the urban areas, violence caused largely by family breakdowns, poverty, and the horrendous public school system that can no longer reliably lift poor, inner city folks out the gutter and the ghetto.

And they just love to blame the guns, and the law-abiding gun owners. For decades -- plural -- they've been pushing for the right to make the metro area gunowners their whipping boys -- set up different rules, say, for permit holders carrying a handgun for self-defense in Minneapolis or hunters out in Lake Elmo in Washington County, and then add on more and more strigent rules when their beating up on the metro gun owners doesn't do any good, as it won't.

For decades, both the NRA and GOCRA have stood firm on the principle: treat all gunowners fairly, and equally, no matter where they live. People count, not zip codes. That's how we got not only statewide carry reform, but statewide range protection, passed.

And in a moment of puppylike incompetence, the NRA lobbyist went into a room at the Capitol and came out with a bill that violates that principle -- just so some outstate hunters can leave their rifle cases at home.

Well, when he told Professor Joe Olson what he had done late that night, Joe hit the ceiling, and the NRA man, not realizing what he had done, called up his superior at ILA for support, and that fellow -- the Director of the State & Local Affairs branch -- told him to kill it.

Instead, for whatever reason, NRA-ILA's top managers sort of semi-circled the wagons, and instead of fixing the problem that their bumbling lobbyist created, has now taken a pass on it, and has taken a position that they are "Neutral" on this horrible precedent of a bill. And that's the bag of . . . beans that he's trying to sell the rest of us.

And, meanwhile, the DFL metrocrats, who have been drooling for -- literally -- decades over the possibility of establishing a precedent of treating outstate gunowners differently than metro area ones, are popping corks on the champagne. French champagne.

We've got to stop this, and now. We need to tell Speaker Kelliher -- yes, and her minion, David Dill, and the well-meaning Tony Cornish -- to put a cork in it.

Now.

I'm not sure on how the NRA works (I just signed up for a free membership a couple weeks ago) but is there any chance that they will allow their resources to get tied up in the WI stuff and leave us alone here for a while?

Remind me, when I have a job and spare cash, to give these orgs a chunk of cash. Back-pay for a job WELL DONE.

THANK YOU FOR FIGHTING FOR OUR RIGHTS!



ALL WE CARE ABOUT IS HUNTING...DEFENSE BE DAMNED.

HUNTING CONVENIENCE IS TO BE GAINED AT THE COST OF 'CITY GUN RIGHTS.'


Also, Joel, thank you for the explanation of how the NRA is leaving Minnesota out to dry.

Confirms some of my long-held suspicions, that they're all for sustaining themselves, not terribly caring about the rights that are won or lost on a state-by-state level.

(Were I running the NRA, I'd be pushing hard, admitting a screwup, but showing that I was doing the best I could, and then some, to correct for my screwup)

That's what they should be doing, yup.

Not enough "cold, dead hands" types in the NRA.......what happened?

The seduction of power is hard to resist.